I dunno what the exact policy is. I doubt most of the whingers do either. Thing is though that segregating migrants into different communities where they dont assimilate into our culture doesnt seem like a very good idea.

Sure I agree we should accept immigrants into our culture. When I was a kid I lived in other countries and wherever we went we were expected to learn @ least enough of the language to get by and we were a bit over-the-top i think in celebrating whatever holidays they had. Like moon festivals and such.

I dont think we as Aussies need to be over-the-top and make them celebrate our holidays. They have to do that "test" now about aussie culture. The best way to assimilate them would be to let them be among us instead of segregating them.

The best way to assimilate them would be to let them be among us instead of segregating them.

But multiculturalism is not assimilation. Assimilation means that immigrants are expected to become the same as everyone else and means probable loss of an immigrant's cultural and ethnic identity. Under multiculturalisn, immigrants' cultural and ethnic identities are retained, and even celebrated.

There is a rather good description of what multiculturalism is in the Australian context in the Department of Immigration and Citizenship's website:

Quote:

In a descriptive sense multicultural is simply a term which describes the cultural and ethnic diversity of contemporary Australia. We are, and will remain, a multicultural society.

As a public policy multiculturalism encompasses government measures designed to respond to that diversity. It plays no part in migrant selection. It is a policy for managing the consequences of cultural diversity in the interests of the individual and society as a whole.

The Commonwealth Government has identified three dimensions of multicultural policy:

cultural identity: the right of all Australians, within carefully defined limits, to express and share their individual cultural heritage, including their language and religion;

social justice: the right of all Australians to equality of treatment and opportunity, and the removal of barriers of race, ethnicity, culture, religion, language, gender or place of birth; and

economic efficiency: the need to maintain, develop and utilize effectively the skills and talents of all Australians, regardless of background.

These dimensions of multiculturalism are expressed in the eight goals articulated in the National Agenda (see chapter one). They apply equally to all Australians, whether Aboriginal, Anglo-Celtic or non-English speaking background; and whether they were born in Australia or overseas.

There are also limits to Australian multiculturalism. These may be summarized as follows:

multicultural policies are based upon the premises that all Australians should have an overriding and unifying commitment to Australia, to its interests and future first and foremost;

multicultural policies require all Australians to accept the basic structures and principles of Australian society - the Constitution and the rule of law, tolerance and equality, Parliamentary democracy, freedom of speech and religion, English as the national language and equality of the sexes; and

multicultural policies impose obligations as well as conferring rights: the right to express one's own culture and beliefs involves a reciprocal responsibility to accept the right of others to express their views and values.

As a necessary response to the reality of Australia's cultural diversity, multicultural policies aim to realize a better Australia characterized by an enhanced degree of social justice and economic efficiency.

I note that you take it as a foregone conculsion that we must take hundreds of thousands of migrants each year from cultures sometimes irreconcilably opposed to our own.

Me? Please dont get semantic with me. I use the wrong words sometimes but the overall gist of my post was that i disagree with multiculturalism if it means segregated groups all over the place all living in thier own little cultures but I dont mind getting more aussies. I didnt mention the amount but now you mention it I need to think about it because i dont really have an opinion on that yet.

Shame on harlots who use immigration and race as a weapon of economic war and corruption against others...shame on them for their crimes, for selling out our economic and employment rights - harlots, liars, thugs, thieves, communists, criminals, murderers.Shame...Shame..,.Shame...

If I had a dollar for every time I have heard an immigrant Australian say 'these damn immigrants should learn to speak our language or rack off' etc..

Ok.But that wasn't the question. What's the point of forcing everybody to learn a language that is a) so incomplete as to be useless b) not spoken anywhere else.

How do you say "deoxyribonucleic acid" in pitjantjatjarra?

So OK dickhead if you don't want to use aboriginal language what are you going to do with all the aboriginal words that we use everyday now?

Parramatta what would you call that now, what about a kangaroo, what would you call Wagga Wagga

Really? If you're going to open with an insult, you'd best have a good argument to follow. Sadly, the emptiness of your argument reflects the emptiness of your head.

You see, I can refer to the name of a place without being fluent in the language.

I don't speak french, but I can say the name of the city "bordeaux". I don't speak mexican, but I can refer to "mt popcatepetl"

Name changes are not exactly unprecedented either. Funny that the monolith formerly known as Ayers rock should still be understood now that it is referred to as Uluru. But who dam cares - this ain't about refusing to use a word cos it's from another language, the suggestion was to force everyone to start speaking a useless language.

Now since words are "made" out of necessity, aboriginal languages (of which there are hundreds) don't have words for things which they had no concept of. They migth have 100 words for sand, or spinifex, but no words for..well, just about everything apart from sand and spinifex.

You'll also be well aware that language exists only so far as it can be understood. English is widely spoken and understood, so it is useful in a wide range of situtaions. Obscure languages spoken by 100 people, all from the same area are incredibly limited in utility. So limited as to be useless in 99.9999% of situtaions.

So the question stands - what point is there, in first creating a language (as no existing aboriginal language has anywhere near enough content to be useful in the modern world) just so that we can force everyone to learn it?